Anger in China over 'super rich club' meetings in Forbidden City

Attempts to use the Forbidden City in Beijing as a venue for an elite Billionaire's Club have caused uproar on the Chinese internet, highlighting the rising envy of ordinary Chinese towards the country's new super-rich elite.

The Forbidden City in Beijing

By Peter Foster in Beijing

7:00AM BST 17 May 2011

Management at the former palace of the Chinese emperors have been accused of hawking memberships to the club at for 1m yuan (almost £92,600) each, offering exclusive access to the palace for international and Chinese millionaires.

Photographs posed on an anonymous microblog showed a table set with glittering crystal and silverware in the recently restored Jianfu Palace, which was once home to the great 18th century Emperor Qianlong.

Photographs of guards dressed in Imperial-era costumes were also shown lining the entrance to the Forbidden City, further fuelling resentment among online users.

China's rulers fret openly about threat of social unrest caused by rising wealth inequalities as ordinary working Chinese struggle to pay for food and housing while an elite few - often trading on political connections - reap massive rewards from China's economic miracle.

Bitter Chinese say that the clique of rich and powerful "500 families" that rule China, with their networks of cronies and hangers-on, increasingly resemble the Imperial Court with its gate-keeping eunuchs that was swept away by a series of revolutions after 1911.

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The Forbidden City authorities had originally dismissed all reports of a "Billionaires Club", describing them as "pure nonsense", adding that the Jianfu Palace was used for "high-level events", much as major historic venues in Britain can be used for corporate hospitality.

"It is not, and could not, be used as a so-called top-class private club for rich people," added at statement on the Forbidden City's official blog last week.

However by Monday the Palace Museum was forced to admit that its commercial subsidiary, the Beijing Forbidden City Culture Development Company, had indeed offered the memberships "wrongly and without consultation" and that these were now being terminated pending a review.

The damage with the public had already been done, however, with a leading Chinese television anchor Rui Chenggang posting on his blog that scheme was a gross misuse of a building that Chinese consider to be the country's greatest national treasures.

"The total of 500 million yuan in entry fees alone is five times as much as the restoration cost of Jianfu Palace," wrote Mr Rui, a popular figure who campaigned successfully to oust a Starbucks coffee shop from the grounds of the Palace four years ago.

"A foreign tourist guide told me proudly that he has arranged a family dinner at the palace for an American billionaire. It is not a big deal if we lose several artefacts, but I am afraid we are losing something more valuable," he added.

Online users appeared to share Mr Rui's sentiments, scorning the Forbidden City management who are already under fire after a thief stole was allowed to steal more than £1m-worth of gold jewellery boxes from a visiting exhibition last week.

"So the club build inside the Palace shall be blamed on a 'subordinate enterprise', and theft shall be blamed on thief," read one sarcastic comment on China's Netease portal, "Don't they know anything about what is happening under their noses? It's shameless." "The Forbidden City is the nation's treasure and it belongs to all Chinese people," added another, "How can they be allowed to use the national heritage to make money?"